Monday 25 October 2010

The battle for Attica Square

A short video on the issue of illegal migration in Greece and the ongoing deteriorating living conditions in Athens. This is probably the hottest issue right now in Greece due to the local and peripheral elections in less than two weeks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPl9PW7ONIQ

The producer (Journeyman pictures), although not impartial generally (if the total of the videos were taken into consideration), gives an honest depiction of the contemporary reality in Athens. On the one side the sad stories of 2-3 million people that try to avoid brutality in their homelands and on the other side the huge financial and bureaucratic burden on the Greek State and the anxieties of the locals that move towards racist views.

Nevertheless, few information are missing to complete the image. The last one year immigrants do not stay in detention centres more than 3 days. They are signing a declaration in which they acknowledge that they trespassed the borders and that they will leave the country in no more than one month. They are then allowed to evacuate the centre with the hope that they will spread across Greece and avoid concentrating in a specific area and by that creating a ghetto. Nevertheless, the vast majority of them do actually come in Attica sq. and generally the centre of Athens something which creates the explosive mixture you can witness in the video.

What is also missing is the views of dispassionate locals and not the graphic figures of the video. They are not enraptured in racist views, they are faced though with the increasing criminality of the area which is attributed to the migrants. The phenomenon ranges from petty thefts and drug transactions to robberies and arson. If the first would be tolerated and to a degree avoided with proper protection, they cannot do the same for the others. Therefore, they are looking for scapegoats.

Another very important information is that really close to Attica sq. is the Exarhia neighborhood were the treatment of immigrants is exactly the opposite. Traditionally this is supposed to be the "anarchist quarter" of the city were extreme right and racist views are not tolerated (something which sometimes leads to similar fascist views...but this is another story). Anarchist groups often take over the protection of immigrants in very brutal fights with skinheads in Attica sq.

It seems to me that the issue is falsely put as a contradiction over the "Greekness" or the Greek identity. This is rather a strong opposition between the political left and right over the issues of migration and petty-criminality. As a matter of fact few days ago people from Attica sq. attacked communist candidates campaigning for the local elections.

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